Story of an ‘unidentified’ detainee

From the Counter-Terrorism Division in Ankara, Turkey... The
story’s named by others, but filled by women who resist the war. We live in a
story whose title reads ‘unidentified’.

Corporal prison, detail. Wikicommons/Onlysilence. 2004. Some rights reserved.This is the most telling
portrait that my past twenty years in journalism have bequeathed me. Had I the
least talent for drawing, I could’ve sketched it here and now. Had Maral lent
an ear to my pleas, I could’ve asked the lady police officer who brought a
chocolate bar with her to the cells each day to alleviate her sense of guilt,
to take a photograph of me.

It was not possible… I was not able to capture the
cell, its approximately 1.90 meters by five meters in width; its twelve black bars of steel, lined up with half a span
between and wet baby-clothes hanging from those bars, with water dripping little
by little onto the floor; the arms of white sweaters smelling of soap and legs
of patched pyjamas tangling around the black bars of prison cells.

What I was more or less
able to discern of the remaining parts of the cell, the part that dwelt in
darkness, the only image that lingers in my mind, that is, is of two bare-foot
women with their long, night-black hair covering their babies, resting on torn blankets
and the babies’ almost-white, pale faces, never looking up.

Here we are on the second floor of TEM – the Counter-Terrorism
Divison, inhabiting a building that originally belonged to a university
which was shut down by decree, and handed over to the police station in Ankara.
I was brought here on Monday night. Why I am here, no one seems to have a
single clue. I can make out the word
“Unidentified” on the desk of the three policemen who brought me here. How very apt for the situation at hand. I was brought here on Monday night. Why I am here, no one seems to have a
single clue.

Oh let’s not go there! For I too thought at first that
this was a desk that belonged to a division that investigated unidentified
murder cases and that due to an overflowing in-tray they were handed over the take in-out part
of the job. This, however, was not the case.

This rather is a new desk, created specifically for those
like me and many more who are not thought fit for membership of any terrorist
organization, yet considered to be inconvenient still in all times of emergency.
It seems certain divisions were unable to identify some culprits within their
systematic law of vilification and thought it was logical to create a new
division as such for journalists, intellectuals, artists and human-rights
advocates.

Dragged by the men of the ‘unidentified’ desk, I was put in a
cell of twelve steel bars, due to text-messages which were not once shown to me
during my time there, due to the propaganda of an ‘unidentified’ organization, the
aims of which of course were never once clarified. I am a card-carrying, tip-to-toe
‘unidentified’: listed under no organization, no proof against me, even my
official name reads ‘unidentified’; perfectly ready to lose my sense of being
within the abyss of an equation with so many unknowns. Certain divisions were unable to identify some culprits within their
systematic law of vilification and thought it was logical to create a new
division as such for journalists, intellectuals, artists and human-rights
advocates.

A white wall is all I see, tricks begin to circulate my
mind as to how to photograph this instant, a cell totally absent of air and light.

The mere sign of life for now is the voice of those
head-down babies trying to breathe through their congested nostrils. As an
experienced mother I am convinced that their efforts are feverish, that if they
continue a little more to breathe from their mouths, this thick and toxic air
will bring sickness upon them. I am deeply worried for them as for my own two
babies whom I left behind.

Then, the same desk brings more suspects; we are more of
a crowd now. Trying to fit on three wooden benches, lined in accordance with
their length, with our heads reaching our tiptoes. I recall doing the same when I was a
little child at my grandmother’s house with my sisters and brothers. The
journalist Seda Taşkın, covering the least space with her tiny body, gets
her head between her legs, laughs with her pitch-black eyes, “You know, I had
just gotten out.”

In a pit this dark, dirty and breathless, the most
wonderful thing that can happen is to wake one morning to a child’s voice. One
disremembers the concept of time here, as outside clocks continue their march.
Babies’ laughter tells the morning hour, and their congested snores, the night-time.

Maral’s persistencies have borne
fruit: the door of the nearby cell is now open for the children to go out every
once in a while. ‘Out’ is a corridor of 1 meter's width and say, 7 meters'
length. The opening of this door and the closing of the wooden one that our
corridor faces is simultaneous. When it opens a couple of eager and joyous eyes
appear and start gazing at us through the bars. It is a baby, of two years
only, with curly blonde hair and eyes trapped within her fat cheeks. She is
called Ayşe. After her, comes Süheyla, a one-year old, struggling to stand upright, as she puts one leg forward, the other is accompanied by laughter. And
behind the two, seven-month old Ali, trying to keep up with them with his tiny
crawls. The expression on his face is so great, greater than his months, that
one can spend hours surveying it and contemplating life without a single
utterance. Süheyla’s terrifyingly tiny body and white-as bone face elicits a feeling
of profound horror comparable only to the encounter with mortal disease.

For breakfast, we have stale
bread, accompanied by a slice of cheese so slim that you can see through it.
Neither these sandwiches with their puzzling smell, evidently prepared
a couple of days beforehand and kept in a fridge, nor the meals served as
lunches are eaten by anyone. Ayşe reaches through the bars to gather pieces of
bread; then opens that wooden-door that separates our cell from others and
gathers every piece of bread from each of the cells. She eats only half, and
the ones she is not able to eat, she returns to her cell.

She comes and goes around, until
the moment the cell door is locked, gathering all she finds that is softer than
stone. When she sees the policemen coming towards her, she puts those pieces of
bread in her sweater and starts to run, bursting in laughter, to avoid going back to
her cell.

I come back from the toilet and
gaze at the steel bars, wondering how those clothes can continue to hang in
there. Later we understand that when they start to dry, even a little, they hit
the floor, making a dreadful sound, as Seral goes on to complain.

We try to reach TEM in a fury, for
the sake of the babies whom we gather to be really sick from their breathing at night: a
doctor must arrive. One indeed comes and leaves, saying only “It is normal for
children to get sick here.” All here is normal, and cold. The wards are cold,
babies’ faces, mothers’ feet, doctors’ hands, all is cold. All is normal,
probable, every kind of thing can happen… All here is normal, and cold. The wards are cold,
babies’ faces, mothers’ feet, doctors’ hands, all is cold.

The night’s terror hangs on till
the next day, now the corridor door is locked, but children’s cells are opened.
Maral and Seral sit right in front of the steel bars, as Maral breast-feeds
Süheyla, and tells her story.

That she and her sister Seral were
brought here because they did not have any identification.

One unidentified, two without
identification.

Right under Ankara TEM’s nose.

Three women, nine babies…

They were only able to bring Ayşe,
Ali and Süheyla with them; the others remain in a house in Tuzluçayır. That is
all the address. The ground floor of a four-storied house in the middle of
Tuzluçayır. Maral has two children, one, Süheyla who she continues to
breast-feed as she speaks, the other, her son whose eyes she last saw when she
was tucked into a police car. The boy ran off from sheer horror… Seral has five. The
police did not allow her to take her older ones, who are 13, 9 and 8
respectively, she was able to take only Ali and Ayşe. I have two. Us three make
nine in total, three here as we continue to talk of the other six, sitting on
concrete pavements.

Ayşe brings all she gathers, picks
a piece of bread and puts it in her mouth. I remain inside the cell, they
‘out’. We come up with a game, I reach my feet through the steel bars, Ayşe
presses them with hers, takes my hand and begins to jump. Then Süheyla arrives
and does the same.

Seral and Maral, ripped out of
Mosul

They are the Turkmenians of Mosul.

Seral, a woman who lived through
war each day, until the building she faced was bombed. The day she saw her
neighbors under a pile of debris, she and her husband decided to leave. But ISIS militants won’t let them. They take
her husband, and send her back home. Coming back with her five children Seral
spends the night in front of slender palls of dust, covering women, men and
children who were her neighbors for all those years. When the morning comes she
puts Ayşe in the baby-car, ties Ali, who was 14 days old then, to her chest,
begins her journey with elder ones going right in front. “How were you able to walk?” I ask, “Down
from the mountains” she replies, “one day with bread, two days without any food…”
I understand only then, why Ayşe gathers and keeps in her cell all things
softer than stone.

They come in through the border,
and as they enter, they are sent directly to Antep, to a camp named ‘Weasel’,
if I am not mistaken. Loads of women and children stay in the camp ‘Weasel’.
One day, Seral tells us, people come with papers. The women make an agreement not
to sign. “But they beat those who refuse to sign.” says Seral. “But what did
you do” I ask. “I signed out of fear.” she replies. Two hundred women and
children in total are send to Baghdad on a plane that night. The journey starts
yet again for Seral. With Ali on her chest, and others in her front,
they go through the mountains, pass the border and her brothers who she knows
to be in Tuzluçayır come and pick her up.

We talk for days, I ask her to tell
me the same story each day and each night, then I close my eyes and write. Gaps
begin to appear, for my mind gets muddled too much, and I ask her to tell me
again. The ones in our ward are tired of repetitions as another journalist,
Hayri Demir, arrives at the ward next to us. When he begins asking questions,
women in our ward say jokingly “Sibel already did the interview, you missed the
news”. We laugh, but Seral cannot understand why. “Are you laughing at my abla[1]” says she. “Abla” is the word she
uses to address me, for she too forgets my name: one tends to forget everything
and everyone around here.

Maral, on the hand hand, had left
far earlier than Seral to arrive here. Her story begins with her salesman husband getting killed in a market-place
bombing. At that time, she is pregnant with Süheyla, she takes her son by the
hand and leaves. When ISIS militants block her exit, she goes to Syria. After
spending three months there, she reaches the border, and the day she arrives,
the baby starts to kick in. She is put in a hospital, and out, only three hours
after she gave birth. After she is not granted access through the border, she
meets human-traffickers. Four, five, six tries, she gets in. Negotiations,
money. With five-six hour old Süheyla on her lap. I figure it is since that day
that colors have forsaken her face. She is put in a hospital, and out, only three hours
after she gave birth. After she is not granted access through the border, she
meets human-traffickers.

They are here now. Seral and
Maral’s house was denounced by others I think: the complaint, “they don’t have any
identification.” Hayri’s ward is so crowded that it is better not to think of
it. They too try to fit in with heads near their tip-toes. For three days they
were kept waiting in the gymnasium, without water or food, and then brought
here. All of them and all of us are no different.

Seral gets annoyed by baby-clothes
she washes each day hitting the floor as they dry. We then come up with a
solution. We take her kerchief off and tie it from one side of the steel bars to
the other as if it is a laundry line. The washed clothes now dry upon this
kerchief. They will be deported in a few days. We try to reach people through
our lawyers, anyone who can help. Everyone, hand in hand…

When the night comes, a melody is
heard from the opposite ward, a Kurdish lament. All cells plunge into absolute
silence. This is the voice of Didar and Hacer, whose hunger strike now enters
its eighth day. Seral hits the walls again, “Abla will they send us back?” she
asks, “I am trying Seral” I say, “I hope they will not.” Then Seral begins her
own Arabian lament… The cells fall into obligatory sleep as Süheyla’s stuffed
nose continues to growl. When the night comes, a melody is
heard from the opposite ward, a Kurdish lament. All cells plunge into absolute
silence.

The crimes of Didar and Hacer too are ‘unidentified’… The only illegal action they took was coming to our ward
for a simple hello if they were not accompanied by any policemen when they were
using the toilet. The only illegal action we took was letting Ayşe in our ward
when Aslı came to take her medicine. Ayşe’s own, single illegal action, was
gathering and keeping everything she can find in wards that she can relate to
food. These continuing actions start to have their consequences, they bring
Ayşe to our cell. Women make pillows of the blankets left near us, and we use
our coats as blankets. I swing Ayşe with my feet, she takes my hand, right
where I fondle her belly, her eyes which she persistently tries to keep open
then gives up to weary sleep. TEM gets busier each night. Didar and Hacer too
are now in our ward. Hacer’s only concern is to pass her classes. “As soon as I
am out of here” she says, “I am going to pass all my courses.” They treat Ayşe and
I to candies placed near them during the hunger strike. An authorial voice
interrupts, “Giving candies is forbidden!”

Keeping children here becomes
harder and harder each day. Seral, ashamed of their cries, pushes her head against the
steel bars desperately, her eyes facing the ground, “We’re here, because we
escaped the war” she says; and the ladies of our ward join as an ensemble:
“We’re here because we said no to war.”

The policemen of the unidentified
desk take me out after some days; I hang onto Maral, I hang onto Seral and hug
Ayşe.

They arrest Seda, and let me go. At
the address I go to after days, the one in the middle of Tuzluçayır, the door
is answered by no one.

The
story’s named by others, but filled by women who resist the war. We live in a
story whose title reads ‘unidentified’.

Somewhere,
right in between the piece of bread Ayşe, who tries to escape the war, hides in
her breast and the hunger of Didar, who says ‘no’ to war…

Translated
from Turkish by Yağız Ay, a student of Comparative Literature and Sociology at
Istanbul Bilgi University, and an intern at Birikim Magazine where this piece was originally published on
February 3.

Sibel Hurtas started her career as a journalist in 1998 for the daily
Evrensel, continued at Sabah, Taraf and Habertürk, reporting on high
juridical affairs. She was awarded the Metin Göktepe journalism prize
(2004), Musa Anter journalism prize (2004), and an achievement award by the
Turkish Journalism Society (2005). Her books include: Kafesteki
Türkiye: Hıristiyanlar Neden Öldürüldü (Turkey Within the Cage: Why the
Christians Were Murdered, 2013, Iletisim Publishers), Canına Tak Eden Kadınlar
- Kocalarını Neden Öldürürler (The Women Who Had Enough - Why Do They Kill
Their Husbands, 2014, Iletisim Publishers).

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.

Recent comments

openDemocracy is an independent, non-profit global media outlet, covering world affairs, ideas and culture, which seeks to challenge power and encourage democratic debate across the world. We publish high-quality investigative reporting and analysis; we train and mentor journalists and wider civil society; we publish in Russian, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese and English.